Pi-gnocchi-o

Extra bonus meal!

There's no actual meal this episode, so I "made" one of Blaine's Meat Cute meals.

Honestly, I read this subtitle as "fra diabolo"---assumed it was made up and out of ghost peppers, so I didn't even try.

In any case, my stomach was not up for spicy tomato tonight, so maybe I'll try that one later.

Instead, I made garlic parmesan gnocchi with spinach and crab. It was delicious.

I boiled stuff, then sautéed some garlic in butter, added cream and chicken broth (and parmesan). I take it back it was average. But I was very hungry and I worked very hard.

I did not put enough garlic in it. But I do love a good creamy spinach.

I want to be very clear if I have not done so already----this is not a blog for me to tell you how to cook. This is a blog for me to write about cooking and experiences. Have your own journey.

I'm excited. I did something yesterday that two years ago I would have dreaded and never done. I did something that avoiding would only cause more anxiety, and it felt so good to do and moreover, not be afraid to do.

The word isn't even grown-up, or responsible. The word I feel is awake.

I used to be the kind of person---not even the kind of person---here's what I used to do. One month, my rent would be 1 minute late, just to see what would happen. Then an hour late. Then a day late. Then three days late just to test when I would actually get charged a late fee.

Today, I'm going to renew my license plate three months in advance instead of procrastinating and spending a month hoping I don't get pulled over. It's like I've suddenly just understood that I don't have to do that. There's an easier way.

You also have to understand that most days I wake up dead. Or, as I might put it, still asleep. Or drowning. Whatever. Days where getting up early to shower makes me want to cry. Days I sit and stare at the computer screen. Just stare for hours. Like paranormal activity.

Lately, I'm awake. I wake up swimming. I greet the day. I work. I cook. I write. I do not stare. I get shit done. This is new to me.

My thoughts on the episode before I weave you a tale:

Liv riding her bike through the streets of Seattle is one of my favorite scenes in the entire series. I like this episode, because I want to remember what it means to be alive. Not just..awake. See, it all relates.

I was thinking about living life to the fullest. And it doesn't mean jumping out of planes and doing crazy, risky, things. Sometimes your life is full because you laugh with your best friend or use a TV show to bond with a partner. To me, it's knowing you have the reins. It's full of simple things, full of agency. I craved gnocchi and I made it. I have the power to cook now. It's being aware that you have the ability to choose. You don't have to get your heart racing. You just have to choose how to spend your time.

Heres' the song I liked from the episode:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF8pvflAKGQ

Here's a story I've been wanting to get off my chest for awhile. Hope it's not too on-the-nose.

---

Final Masquerade

One step closer to the edge. That’s all she can take. Words pierce the air and they’re all wrong. Words in this moment don’t seem right. She wishes he would just shut up. SHUT UP!

Her eyes focus on his white collar, imagining it tightening, restricting his breath, sparing his words. So she can take a moment just to stare at the ground in silence. Not the ground exactly, but the hole by her feet. The hole she can feel herself sliding into if she’s not too careful. And part of her wants to.

“None of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord”

She winces. She knows what comes next. The promise of the afterlife. The promise she’s quite sure in this moment is a lie. There’s a box in the ground. From dust we came and into dust we’ll remain. We get shut in a box and we rot. She didn’t know she believed this until this moment. Now she can’t escape it. These wounds they will not heal.

This is when the tears come. The first in days. Because, as she knew, once they started, they wouldn’t stop. She let the tears fall and she tried to remember the last song he sang for her.

He thought about what song he’d play while he died. This was a conscious thought he had that day. But he’d also thought about the song that saved him. In the end, he found one more light. He was eleven years old and it all started with this song. The music that let him know that pain exists. The truth had been coursing through his veins for awhile now, and he had just begun to put a name to it. Now, he doesn’t remember much, just how painfully young he was. But old enough. Old enough to know that there is a group of happy, shiny people and then there was him. In fifth grade, this feeling is rearing it’s ugly head. His percussion kit slaps against his leg as he walks. Could he even call it a percussion kit? He wanted a drumkit and he was stuck with a fricken xylophone.

“They’re bells.” His mom had told him. “They’re cool. I played them when I was in school.”

This assured him more than anything else that they weren’t cool.

And as these bells slapped against his thigh...he knew he couldn’t go home.

He went to the park and loaded up his walkman. Listened to the song. He knew pain now, but so did the song.

The last time she heard Bible verses was at their wedding. This is too painful to think about, so she pushes it from her mind. When she closes her eyes, she can still feel his hand on her back, his stubble against her cheek. Mostly she feels his fingers stretching the space between hers. His fingertips squeeze between her metacarpals, and she has to remind him that it hurts. There’s not enough space between her delicate fingers---her skin feels stretched almost to the point of breaking. She could feel the twinge now, like she was about to break.

Years later, pain was in. Everyone listened to the song, but only he was breaking down. He was the one shut inside his room alone, everyone else was piercing their ears at the mall---talking about pain. You can’t imagine what it’s like to grow up in a world where everyone wants to be screaming. Everyone wants to be misunderstood. This is the attention of our generation. But her? She’s not bleeding on the ballroom floor just for the attention.

They all assume he’s safe there in his room, but he wants to start again. The pain---the real pain, that is---is unbearable. So he has a plan. Several actually. The first plan is to never be home. The second plan is for the cuts to make it down to his wrist. They start at his elbow. And he has a long ways to go. As long as he doesn’t have to go home.

I’ve become so numb, I can’t feel you here. She wishes she could sit down. She can feel her legs about to turn to crumble beneath her feet.

This is stupid, she thinks. There’s no reason I can’t sit down and rest my legs. The grass can stain my dress. Let the people stare. This is the one day they can’t judge me.

Nothing matters, everything she cared about is gone. It’s about to be buried in the dirt.

She stays standing...partially wishing the ground will cave beneath the ground and she can slip right under. Lay next to him one more time.

He sat down. He wished he had caught it on television. There’s something about reading it on a twitter page that makes him feel like he’s in a glass box while the rest of the world turns. As if it were read to him in a news anchor’s voice, he would feel less alone. Like the anchor was talking directly to him, about to reach out and touch his shoulder.

But he read it on a phone screen and all the days he’s buried resurface. All the days before cell phones, when he’d wait for a knock at the door, then the stagnant ring of the telephone on the wall, then later, a beep of an IM. Those days he spent waiting, and ultimately alone. These were the days he’d turn on VH1 and wait for the song to play. If anyone died on one of those days, we wouldn’t know until 6pm.

He had known heartbreak and abandonment. But not like this. This was much crueler. The man who had told him to never stop fighting had stopped fighting. And he was supposed to carry on. Or was he supposed to give up, too? They’d tell him it was a disease. Like cancer. But he’d always wonder if they knew something he didn’t. If he knew something no one else understood. That everything ends.

Why? Why now? The questions echoes in her head and pounds against her head. She had given him everything. She can’t understand that it didn’t even matter. But she wasn’t the only person with these things in mind.

Thousands of miles away, the question rattles through his brain as well. There’s no sense in having heroes when they leave you.

The sun set for him and embraced the world in grey.

Sirens blare. Lights flash from the other side of the street, coming closer. There’s only a matter of time. But she knows there’s no pulse. She had tried compressions. Her small palms against his sternum, she had pushed down to the right rhythm and her arms ached. Her wrists, she was sure, had bent too far backwards, not enough to break, but enough to be sure. She had done this until she collapsed. And that’s where she was now, her head laying on his chest, hearing no heartbeat, feeling the warmth leave his body. His shirt soaked with her tears.

Should she have called someone else? Someone who could have gotten there faster? Should she have just stayed home?

Now there’s a pounding, the paramedics footsteps on the stairs. It doesn’t take long to find her. The look in their eyes make her cry even harder.

The first man helps her up. The woman opens up the defibrillator. Our heroine receives a shock blanket and watched them try in vain. She suspects they do this a lot. Put on a show.

But one look at his neck and everyone knows it’s snapped. And just like that...he’s no longer there. Just a body. A bruised pile of flesh to stick in a box to rot.

This is an end, not a finality for her, but an end of a haunting and the beginning of a nightmare.

There’s only so much he can drown out with a drum beat. He wishes he could drown it all. He’s learned the beat of the song, not that it’s recognizable on it’s own. But he pounds it out, not just with the sticks but his entire body. It’s the rhythm he lives to. Raindrops put the rhythm on the pavement. The beat he hears in the rhythm of his feet, in the whir of the fan blades, in the beating of his heart. Everyone has a rhythm they belong to. This is his.

And for those moments, it takes away the pain.

This is a beginning, not an end to a haunting, but a beginning of healing.